Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

> "Extremely high wealth concentration has historically been associated with revolutions and other unrest."

The truest statement of all. American history books would glorify the American Revolution as a battle against tyranny for freedom, but above anything it was a battle against extreme economic exploitation.

Just like the French Revolution... just like the Russian Revolution... just like the Chinese Civil War...

The rich are digging their own graves. No amount of economic power will hold back a sea of desperate, furious peasants who have nothing left to lose and every desire to see your head on a stick. I'm not looking forward to that mess.

View on HN

Oh please, get a fucking grip on reality for fuck sake. Those populations starved for years under insanely despotic regimes.

Today even poor people have too much to eat (look at obesity rates) and leave tvs behind when they loose their house cause it isn't worth taking with them. Your computer would have been worth fighting a war over 200 years ago.

To suggest that we are anything close to a "sea of desperate, furious peasants who have nothing left to lose and desire to see your head on a stick" while the peasents have access to better food, medical care, running water, communications, transportation and entertainment that the Sun King ever dreamed of shows how crazy that argument is.

Marie Antoinette would approve of that sentiment. Let them eat Big Macs?

Most likely never actually said http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/antoinettemarie/a/histmy...

They have access to Big Macs, they are one of the cheapest foods ever. Do you think anybody would have cared about that cake remark (which she never said) if they really had eaten cake instead?

even poor people have too much to eat (look at obesity rates)

oh, this argument again.

consider for a second why they become obese in the first place?

They didn't starve?

they constantly eat because the food they're eating is not feeding them?

true, they don't starve. they die of heart disease.

That's not something any revolution I have ever heard about has been started over, so while it's bad, in this context it doesn't matter.

That's not something any revolution I have ever heard about has been started over

Because revolutions of the future will be nothing like revolutions of the past.

above anything it was a battle against extreme economic exploitation.

The Crown's North American subjects were the richest, most lightly taxed group of polities on Earth, the Crown's British subjects the second richest, most heavily taxed.

The American Revolution could more accurately be called the War of American secession; substantially the same people were on top in NA at the beginning and the end. The American Revolution was a different creature to the French and British.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com